Regret
by GoddessofSnark
Summary: Slashy Christmas Carol thing. Marley realizes that perhaps helping Scrooge isn't a good thing.


A/N So it's a slashy little Christmas Carol thing...:) Marley watcin scrooge and realizing that perhaps reforming scrooge could have it's downsides.

I sit here, watching over you, watching you as you spend your life a man reformed. And I regret it, I regret that night I came to you. I love you, for redeeeming yourself from my fate, but it seems that since I saved you that you've forgotten about me, that I've become a distant memory. I can remember days when you'd find yourself at my grave, wondering what it is that went wrong, wondering why I had to leave you. Now I'm lucky if you come here once a year on the twenty-fourth, to mark just another year that it has been since I passed.

You're a changed man now. You even had a party this year, one to rival Fezziwig's. And you seem so happy now. You're very nearly on your way to having a wife and a family, but you consider yourself too old for such things. So instead you're an uncle, a surrogate father to half the city now, you've become the one that all the little children rush to, the one that will give them a ginea a piece for caroling.

But you forget what passed between us when i walked in life, you've forgotten what I meant to you, even from the start. You've forgotten that I was your only friend, your only comfort. I came to you that night two years ago out of a love for you, a wanting to see you spared the torture that I have gone through, that I must suffer through for all eternity, but I regret that. If I had known that you would have shunned the very memory of me then i would have never done it.

I'd rather see you here, with me, suffering, I'd rather spend all of eternity being tortured with you at my side, with you being tortured as well, if only because you would be there with me. But you've saved yourself, redeemed yourself, you'll be a man that goes on, that doesn't have to walk eternally, as i am forced to. I will see you naught once you pass from this world.

I doubt you would want to see me, once you have passed anyway. You've all but forgotten about me, haven't you? I'm surprised that my name even still stands on the sign to our old counting house. You'll still respond when called my name, though, and you still tell people that I've passed on. But you say it so nonchalantly. As if i was nothing more than a pet that had died.

Do you hate me, Ebeneezer? Do you hate me for all that I have done? For it was I that had pushed you down the path that you were on. It is why I was the one who came to save you. It was I that I had pushed away all happiness in your life until it was myself and our buisness that was left in your life. Nothing else, just myself. I wanted you all to myself.

And I still want you all to myself. I could have had any woman in London for my taking, but I wanted you, the one thing I couldn't have. I remember young Miss Fezziwig trying for the longest time to court me, to no avail. I wanted nothing else but you, from the minute that I realized what a striking man you had grown to be, compared to the awkward young boy you had been.

But you never wanted me, you never gave me a second thought. I was your closest friend, true, but nothing else, you never even entertained that notion. I came to you that night out of love, because that's what it is that I felt, that I still do feel for you, Ebeneezer Scrooge. I love you, but you will never know it.

I wanted nothing more than to tell you that when I had appeared to you, but I never could, When I went to say it, the words wouldn't come out. Do you hear it though? I say it so often, do you hear it in the wind? Listen for it, listen for me, listen for me begging you to notice me in the way you have never noticed me before.

I'm begging you to pay me any notice at all. Is it wrong of me to want you for myself? I would gladly walk life chained as I am now forever if I had you at my side, I would gladly give up any and all posessions I had in life to have had you. It was I that told you that love was a foolish notion, because your love for Belle was foolish, it was me that you should have loved.

Perhaps I am too selfish, too greedy, but if I am, so be it. I'd rather be a selfish man in love, than a giving man without anyone to watch over, without anyone to whisper my feelings to. Just sitting here beside you is plenty, but I want more. I want to be able to touch you, like I touched you that night, just once more, touch you once more, and feel you respond to it. I want to be able to tell you exactly how it is that I feel for you.

It's why I regret ever saving you from treading down the same path that I have. Because now, I will never see you again, not once you pass from this earth. Once you shun the mortal coil, I will be tormented even more than I am now, for I will not have you to ease my suffering. And so I beg of you to forget all that I had told you, put the spirit's teachings behind you, and become the man that I had turned you into. For my sake.


End file.
